Fauset is the author of four novels: There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy, American Style (1933). She also wrote poems and essays, and worked as an educator.

Fauset rented rooms in five locations in DC while teaching at M Street High School; two still stand. At M Street, she taught French and Latin from 1907 through 1919, after which time she moved to New York to become literary editor of the Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP. In that position, from 1919 through 1926, she mentored several younger writers, such as Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, Nella Larsen, and Langston Hughes. In her prominent position, she influenced top African American leaders to support the important role the arts could play in what was then called "racial uplift." Fauset was a guiding spirit for the Harlem Renaissance and for literary modernism in general.